Rensselaer Republican, Volume 14, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 September 1881 — A Bird Story. [ARTICLE]

A Bird Story.

Snraereet (Ky.) special, A sight so strange that it tvoiild pay straugers to come miles to see, occurs every night, five miles south of tnis place, ou the Cedar bluffs of the Cumberland river. Every evening- jdst about sundown the sky is darkened as far as the eye can eee by great flocks of birds coming to roost in these cedars. Your correspondent, accompanied by a nalive aud a lantern, spent a couple of hours last night among the cedars watching this wonderful congregation of birds of every tongue, plumage, and of almost every country this side of the tropics. Startled by -our approach, great clouds of the chattering tribe would rise from their perches in the cedars and fly off’ with a noise like deep and distant thunder. We had to scream at the°top of our voice to hear one another spesk. Large limbs ol the trees were broken off, caused by the accumulated weight of bird.-. Hundreds blinded by our lanterns would fly into our faces. We could pick thousands of them from tbe branches of tbe trees. But what seemed so strange about this bird convention was the seeming peace and harmony that existed between tbe birds. The hawk and dove roosted in peace on the same branch, while hundreds of robins aud sparrows circled in perfect safety around the perch of great owls. In the early morning when these songsters of the gToves left their perches ia tbe cedars for the fields of the open country it was a most beautiful .gorgeous sight to behold. With the blue of the jay, the crimson and red of fence wren and redbird, the yellow and gray of the yellow and sparrow birds seemed like some grand and splended panorama of the floral kingdom endowed with the power of music, moving through the air in a procession composed of all the colors of the rainbow. Hundreds of people come every nieht to see the etrauge wonder. A great many poor people gain almost their entire suDport by catching and selling these birds.